New Year's Resolutions 2012

Ok, Mom, winter quarter has begun so I'm beginning my blog about teaching again.  Now you can quit bugging me about it! :)

First what I'm thankful for (teaching-wise) and then my New Year's resolutions for teaching:

Thankful for:

1.   Gainful employment in my profession of choice: I hardly need to expand on this (but you know I will anyway).  In this age of austerity, I wake up every day counting myself  abundantly fortunate to be living out my dream.  Indeed, in the mid-1980s, while most of my peers in college were dreaming of starting businesses or chasing their fortunes on Wall Street, I was dreaming of some day being a history professor.  Ever since taking Leroy Ashby's US history survey course at WSU in 1985, I figured there could be nothing more fun or rewarding than spending one's life trying to excite undergraduates about history.  Professor Ashby sure had a lot of fun: back in the days before the internet or Powerpoint, he dashed back and forth between an overhead projector, a cassette player, a slide projector, and an actual film projector (yes, complete with a reel of film, just like in the old days), striving to give his students a multimedia experience.  I was transfixed.  During the swashbuckling nineties, while more rational twenty-somethings were making millions in the dot.com revolution, I was busily scribbling notes in some dusty archive (this was before the archives were online) and happily accepting student loans as I worked my way through my masters and doctorate degrees.  It all paid off in spades.  In 1998, I hit pay-dirt: a tenure-track job at Columbia Basin College with a starting base salary of$ 34,500.  I never looked back.  Fourteen years later, I'm still living the dream (and still paying off my student loans, if you can believe it….).  In all sincerity, I can't imagine a more rewarding career--one that allows me the opportunity to try to make sense of the world and the freedom to use my own voice.  You can't ask for more than that.

2. My students:  Ok, it's obvious that without students I wouldn't have a job, but that's not exactly what I mean here.  I mean that I really appreciate those people, young and old and in-between,  sitting in front of me, who are so much in the midst of "the struggle."  Their struggles are not all equivalent, to be sure --some are simply struggling to stay awake after an ill-advised evening of revelry while others are literally struggling to survive: holding down jobs, tending to families and sick relatives, overcoming their own health problems, battling with financial and emotional stress, and on and on.  But there they are, sitting at their desks, trying to focus, trying to make sense of this curious material that I think is so important, but which runs so contrary to the tide of our popular culture, with its sound bites and 24X7 sensationalism.  It's a tough business being a student in twenty-first century America, and I'm grateful for all those people who, in spite of all the conflicting pressures and distractions, make such a good faith effort to apply themselves to the complicated task of self-improvement.  Isn't that what life is all about?  It is for me.

"Good God, man, get a hold of yourself!"  Ok, ok, enough on that front--if I continue I'll just get more syrupy and teary-eyed.    Let's stiffen that upper lip and move on to resolutions, a much more Churchillian task:

Resolutions:

1.  Post one blog entry a week while the quarter is in session.  [One more thing to be thankful for: a quarter system that allows you a fresh start every 12 or so weeks along with some time in between to decompress.]

2. Experiment.  Why not?  My classes should be pedagogical laboratories, no?  For example, in one class this quarter I am giving no quizzes and no exams--just papers.  Why can't I do that?  I CAN DO THAT!  If only I liberate myself from the shackles of my self-imposed bondage!  [One more thing to be thankful for: a job that gives me the autonomy to experiment and innovate.]

In coming weeks: What I learned in 2011 (about teaching, that is); why primary documents are so important; putting the "community" back into the community college classroom.

Yes, brothers and sisters,  you got it:  strap yourself in, because 2012 is going to be a wild ride for this particular blog.  Amen.